Now before anyone jumps down my throat here I will say that this site is very pretty and the overall experience is enjoyable to use – but honestly – why does this site exist? Nikon consumers are really supposed to create a drawing with a ray of light and connect to users across the world? Why? Why spend my time? Am I coming back to this site frequently to connect to more people? To see who is connected to me? If so, then is this platform and execution the best to facilitate these connections? What is the service this site is providing me – or to put it another way – what’s in it for me (other than a way to waste 10 minutes of my day)?
I see this over and over with microsites and I just can’t understand why they exist. Now some will say that a brand is an experience and creating an immersive, enjoyable digital experience is essential to fully formed brand. And I agree that interaction patterns and digital experiences are brand-elements. But in order to justify the amount of commitment on the user’s part to engage and use this brand-experience, in this case (and in most cases), I think the payoff needs to be much greater. I think standing apart more from other digital experiences (whether they’re transactional, funcitonal, or whatever) is essential. And unfortunately over and over again, the medium of the mictosite just falls down in accomplishing this task.